To Someone Else's Eyes

I have been reading the book on and off these days. I am too preoccupied with this project that I am into. Something that I want so much to work. Updating my other blog is not hard since it's not as demanding as a book blog.

I took note of this back on my pad so that I can at least keep the idea. But right now, I am already somewhere a few chapters off this topic.

The Burnhams, together with eighteen more people (mostly Filipinos) were captured at the Dos Palmas Resort in Palawan in the first hours of the morning. It was twilight and almost everyone was still in bed or was just about getting ready to get off and rise.

Martin didn't have his shirt on, probably complaining about the heat in the country, when armed men banged on their door and forced them to get out of their cottage-by-the sea. Gracia, on the other hand, was wearing a sleeveless blouse or a thing of that sort.

The hostages and their takers rode a motor boat that took them somewhere. Afterwards, as Gracia observed that the boat was too small for them, they had to transfer to another boat that was highjacked by the rest of the group.

In the early part of the ride, realizing that the hostage-takers are not only men, but Muslim men, Gracia felt awkward. She knows that Muslims require women to be 'properly dressed.' with her sleeveless blouse, she felt uncomfortable of what she had on.

I couldn't help but think about Gracia's high respect for their religion even though these men are her captors. I know that Gracia was not even thinking malicious thoughts about these men. Being properly dressed is a major thing for Muslims. I know this because having lived in Dubai for two years, I saw how these people take this a serious matter. In the cooperative supermarket established by the locales of Dubai, you can see signs that require women to be properly dressed or face apprehensions.

I am not a Muslim but I know how they feel about the issue of being properly dressed. Whenever I see women wearing small pieces of clothes anywhere, I am the one who feels embarrassed. Because even the priests from the catholic church talk about being properly dressed even if it's just attending the Sunday mass service.

After all, this issue about proper dressing in women is not of religious nature.